Wherever and whenever people have been found talking, they have been found drinking: an age-old pastime with an equally storied history. Alcohol and civilization have developed in close quarters, sometimes supporting each other and sometimes getting in each other’s way.The School of Sophisticated Drinking, which began as an ongoing series of lectures at Berlin’s legendary Victoria Bar in 2003, traces the deep-seated lineage of drinking in the social, political, and even sc...

This book is a backstage pass into the world of small-scale distilling of whiskies, gins, vodkas, brandies, and more. The reader, the ultimate spirits aficionado, will learn how water and grain are transformed into the full range exquisite, timeless liquors. There are few books available that explore the actual craft of distilling in such detail. Most of the other spirits books chronicle the historical side of the distilling world or focus on the flavors of various vintages. Our book will ...

History repeats itself as Uncle John presents another volume of funny stories and fascinating facts about the past!For our historical trivia collection number two, we dug ever deeper into our bottomless vaults to bring you more of history's most colorful characters, cultural milestones, funniest mishaps, and earth-shattering events. More than 500 pages of great stories, fascinating facts, and fun quizzes await you.Read about . . . * Philosophers who fought ...

"THE DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF BOURBON."— Sacramento BeeA Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance BestsellerA ROLLICKING BIOGRAPHY OF BOURBON WHISKEY THAT DOUBLES AS "A COMPLEX AND ENTERTAINING" ( WALL STREET JOURNAL) HISTORY OF AMERICA ITSELFFew products are so completely or intimately steeped in the American story as bourbon whiskey. As Dane Huckelbridge's masterfully crafted history reveals, the i...

The New Yorker dishes up a feast of delicious writing–food and drink memoirs, short stories, tell-alls, and poems, seasoned with a generous dash of cartoons.“To read this sparely elegant, moving portrait is to remember that writing well about food is really no different from writing well about life.”—Saveur (Ten Best Books of the Year)Since its earliest days, The New Yorker has been a tastemaker—literally. In this...

For two hundred years, a rogues' gallery of chefs, line cooks, and dishwashers have slaved away, largely unseen, to serve the dining public. Their pedigrees reach back to the first restaurants during the reign of France's Louis XVI and extend to the Delmonico brothers in New York, Escoffier in Paris, and, in Fried: Surviving Two Centuries in Restaurants, a renegade cook in Minneapolis walking like a duck with a whole, raw salmon on his head.Author and professional chef Steve Lerach...

In this expanded and updated edition of Forgotten Cocktails and Vintage Spirits, historian, expert, and drink aficionado Dr. Cocktail adds another 20 fine recipes to his hand-picked collection of 80 rare-and-worth-rediscovered drink recipes, shares revelations about the latest cocktail trends, provides new resources for uncommon ingredients, and profiles of many of the cocktail world's movers and shakers. Historic facts, expanded anecdotes, and full-color vintage images from extremely unco...

An indispensable follow-up to his classic Complete Book of Mixed Drinks, Anthony Dias Blue presents The Complete Book of Spirits, a comprehensive collection of history, lore, and tasting tips, along with recipes for select cocktails. Here, in one concise and easy-to-use volume, is all the information a consumer needs to shop, mix, and sip like a spirits expert.From bathtub gin to mojito madness, Blue brings the dynamic history of the spirits industry alive, demonstrating that spiri...

What was eating them? And vice versa.In What the Great Ate, Matthew and Mark Jacob have cooked up a bountiful sampling of the peculiar culinary likes, dislikes, habits, and attitudes of famous—and often notorious—figures throughout history. Here is food• As code: Benito Mussolini used the phrase “we’re making spaghetti” to inform his wife if he’d be (illegally) dueling later that day.• As superstition: Baseball star Wade Boggs credited his o...

While some may wonder, “Does the world really need another flavored vodka?” no one answers this question quite so memorably as spirits writer and raconteur Jason Wilson does in Boozehound. (By the way, the short answer is no.) A unique blend of travelogue, spirits history, and recipe collection, Boozehound explores the origins of what we drink and the often surprising reasons behind our choices.In lieu of odorless, colorless, tasteless spirits, Wilson cha...

A spirited look at the history of alcohol, from the dawn of civilization to the modern dayAlcohol is a fundamental part of Western culture. We have been drinking as long as we have been human, and for better or worse, alcohol has shaped our civilization. Drink investigates the history of this Jekyll and Hyde of fluids, tracing mankind's love/hate relationship with alcohol from ancient Egypt to the present day.Drink further documents the co...

Rum arguably shaped the modern world. It was to the eighteenth century what oil is to the present, but its significance has been diminished by a misguided sense of old-fashioned morality dating back to Prohibition. In fact, Rum shows that even the Puritans took a shot now and then. Rum, too, was one of the major engines of the American Revolution, a fact often missing from histories of the era. Ian Williams's book -- as biting and multilayered as the drink itself -- triumphantly restores r...